National Apprenticeship Week in England and Apprenticeship Week in Wales (3-7 February) allows The Open University to shout about the success of the apprenticeships it offers to employers, as well as their impact on learners and businesses.
Apprenticeships are aligned to the OU’s mission of providing education and progression opportunities for learners of all ages and from all backgrounds. The OU has offered apprenticeships since 2016 with programmes available in England, Scotland (its celebration of apprenticeships is in March) and Wales. More than 550 employers have chosen the OU’s flexible delivery model to upskill and reskill both new and existing staff.
Please view the Chartered Manager Degree Apprenticeship (CMDA) and the Senior Leader Master’s Degree Apprenticeship (SLMDA) if you are wanting to be an apprentice yourself, or have friends and family considering starting one, or one of our alumni looking to introduce them at your workplace, or a learning and development professional wanting to know more.
Multinational IT firm IBM are among those to have chosen the OU to upskill their employees through our apprenticeships. You can see in the video below how well the CMDA and SLMDA apprenticeships work for IBM.
Please contact the apprenticeships team if you think apprenticeships could work for your company.
There is an opportunity to attend a pre-recorded webinar, ‘The impact of apprenticeships in the workplace’, on Wednesday 5 February at 10:00am. This boasts an expert panel of learning and development professionals from organisations such as DHL, Pearson, Public Health England, Unilever, Health Education England and the OU. Please register here.

Wednesday, September 2, 2026 - 09:00 to Friday, September 4, 2026 - 17:00
University of Donja Gorica, Oktoih 1, Podgorica 81000, Montenegro
This academic conference hopes to draw feminist scholars, activists and communities together to consider what caring feminism across borders might mean now and for the future.
Thursday, March 4, 2027 to Friday, March 5, 2027
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Contact SOMF 2027 Team
The annual European convening of the service operations management research community; an event designed for deep discussion, new collaborations, and the open exchange of work-in-progress alongside finished research.